Haunted
by theboywiththebread
Summary: Yao visits a supposedly haunted house as a dare and meets Ivan, a mysterious young man who claims that he too is exploring the abandoned building. However, it soon becomes clear that there is much more to Ivan than meets the eye. AU. RoChu.
1. Zavelow House

**I started writing this for Halloween two years ago, but I didn't finish it in time and decided to wait until the following year to post it, which didn't work out either. This year, I plan on getting at least a couple of chapters done before Halloween is over, but the story probably won't be complete until some time in November.**

* * *

><p>Yao stood on the front doorstep of the abandoned house, fumbling with the video camera in his hands and trying to find the <em>on<em> button in the dark. He had been dared to visit the house, which was supposedly haunted, and the only reason that the he had accepted the dare was to prove to his friend the house was not actually haunted because ghosts did not actually exist.

Yao finally hit the right button, and hit record before turning the camera around so that it was pointing at him.

"Hi, Arthur! I'm outside the house and it's freezing cold and this is actually really pointless and stupid, but I'm going to humour you and go inside anyway. I'm going to film it too, just like you asked, even though that's means there's going to be video footage of me breaking and entering."

Yao turned the camera back around to face the door. He could always delete the footage after he had shown Arthur, and besides, it wasn't as if he was breaking into a house that someone lived in.

He turned the knob and was surprised to find that the door was unlocked. It swung open with a creak, revealing a darkened hallway.

"I'm going to go inside and take a look around. I might as well enjoy the full abandoned house experience while I'm here because I'm sure as hell not doing this again," Yao said as he walked inside.

The door slammed shut behind him, causing Yao to let out a startled yelp.

"That was just the wind," he said, not sure if he was explaining for Arthur's benefit or reassuring himself.

The house was eerily quiet, completely devoid of all of the little noises that one tended not to notice at home – the faint hum of the refrigerator, the cars driving along the street outside, the neighbours making noises in their own houses. The abandoned house was secluded, a few miles from the rest of the town and at the end of a very long driveway. Yao hadn't seen any other cars on the road while driving there, and why would he? It was a Tuesday night and people were unlikely to be out late, and besides, it wasn't like there was any reason to be in this area – except, of course, for a stupid dare.

Yao's footsteps and breathing stood out amidst the utter silence of the empty house, but as there was nobody around to hear him, he didn't bother trying to keep quiet. At the end of the hallway was a winding staircase, but Yao decided to explore the first floor before going upstairs.

The first room that Yao peered into was completely devoid of furniture. There was nothing to see there, so the he left after spending a few seconds in the doorway without properly going inside. The room across the hall was similarly empty, but there was a door against the wall – a cupboard, Yao presumed, but he decided to check it out anyway. He strode across the room and opened the door, and was surprised to find that inside was a staircase leading down to the basement.

"Might as well see what's down there," Yao said as he began his descent, careful of his step as there was no railing to lean on, "so far this is an extremely underwhelming haunted house. Maybe the basement will be more exciting."

He wasn't sure if he was narrating for Arthur or to drown out the unnerving silence.

"This is actually a pretty nice house. I don't know why it's abandoned, I mean–"

Without warning, the door at the top of the staircase slammed shut. Yao jumped at the sound, missed his step and tumbled off the side of the staircase, the camera slipping out of his hand as he hit the ground.

Yao groaned and cursed under his breath as he sat up. He had landed on his side, and though his left leg hurt like hell, he was sure that he hadn't broken anything. Well, other than the camera –wherever it was, it had turned off, leaving the basement in complete darkness. It occurred to him as he fumbled around in his pocket for his phone that the wind could not be responsible for the door closing this time.

Yao pulled out his phone and turned it on, its faint blue glow illuminating the room. He frowned as he looked around the empty basement for camera. He had felt it slip from his grasp and heard it fall, yet it was nowhere to be found. An uneasy feeling swept over Yao, and the dark basement began to make him feel claustrophobic. He got to his feet, his leg still aching from the fall, and wasted no time getting back up the stairs.

Back in the room that he had entered the basement through, Yao took a moment to assess the situation. His camera had _disappeared_, and there was no reasonable explanation as to how. Maybe he'd hit his head and was hallucinating, or maybe this was all a dream and he wasn't here at all. It didn't feel like a dream, though. The pain in his leg was too real.

It was probably just his imagination, but Yao was sure that he could hear talking. It was quiet, but not so quiet that he could not hear it. He crept into the hallway and listened closely. Yes, there was definitely someone talking upstairs. Though Yao knew that it was a bad idea, that nothing good could come of being alone with some stranger in an abandoned house miles from town, he found himself walking up the stairs to the second floor.

The talking grew louder as Yao got closer, and he noticed that it sounded familiar. Though he couldn't quite work out whose voice it was, he was comforted by the fact that it was someone he knew. He stopped outside one of the closed doors and listened. This was where the talking was coming from, and he could just make out what was being said.

"Might as well see what's down there. So far this is an extremely underwhelming haunted house."

It was his own voice, and those were the words that he had just recorded himself saying.

If the camera was upstairs, then someone had moved it – there was someone behind that door, and they knew that he was there. The element of surprise was not on his side, but he wanted his camera back and he wanted to know how it had gotten all the way up here.

He turned the doorknob and pushed the door with his shoulder. It swung open slowly, hinges creaking and instantly giving his presence away to the young man standing inside the room. He looked to be in his late teens, around Yao's age, though that was where the similarities ended. He was large – tall, broad-shouldered and stocky – but his face betrayed how young he was. His skin was pale, his cheeks were a little chubby and his face was framed by snow-blonde locks.

The stranger was holding the camera in his hand, but his eyes were on Yao himself.

"Hello," he said in a calmly. Yao noticed that he had an accent, but he had too many other questions to bother trying to work out what kind.

"Why have you got my camera?" Yao asked.

"Oh. You left it in the basement. I was going to give it back to you, but I just wanted to take a look at it first," said the blonde teen.

Yao frowned. There was no way that this person could have gotten down to the basement and back up without passing him, and besides, the camera had disappeared while he was still in the basement.

"Can I have it back now?" he asked.

The other boy nodded and handed Yao the camera.

"Sorry for taking it. And sorry about your fall, that must have hurt," said the stranger.

Yao was about to ask how the other boy knew that he had fallen, but he hadn't exactly done it quietly.

"What are you doing here?" he asked instead.

"I'm just… exploring, I suppose," said the blonde, "I'm Ivan, by the way."

"Yao. I'm Yao."

Ivan grinned.

"Nice to meet you, Yao," he said.

"Yeah, likewise. Now that I've got my camera back, I think I'm gonna go," said Yao.

He didn't understand what had happened, but he was sure that staying in the house couldn't be a good idea.

"Oh," Ivan said disappointedly, "can I show you something before you leave?"

Yao shrugged.

"I guess," he said, "depends what it is."

Yao felt a little apprehensive about trusting Ivan. He didn't know if Ivan was to blame for the inexplicable disappearance and reappearance of the camera or if the house was playing tricks on both of them, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something off about him.

"Some things have to be seen to be believed," Ivan replied.

There was _definitely_ something off about him. Still, Yao decided to play along in the hopes that whatever Ivan was going to show him might explain how he'd gotten his hands on Yao's video camera.

"Okay, show me this unbelievable thing," said Yao.

Ivan stood stock still before him, his eyes closed and his brow furrowed in concentration. Before Yao could question what he was doing, Ivan disappeared. One moment he was standing in front of Yao, and then all of a sudden he was gone.

"Ivan?!" Yao called.

"Right here," came Ivan's voice from behind him.

Yao whirled around and found that Ivan was standing in the doorway.

"How did you do that?" he asked in disbelief.

"I don't understand how myself, but it's something that I've been able to do ever since…" Ivan stopped, as if he was unsure of himself.

"Ever since what?" Yao asked.

He knew that the answer would be something outrageous – there was no rational explanation for what he had just seen – yet Ivan's next words still took him by surprise.

"Ever since I died."


	2. Dead Man Walking

Yao froze. _Died_? Ivan was dead? It was completely ridiculous, and yet Yao believed him. How could he not? He had just seen Ivan disappear right in front of him. That wasn't something that normal, _living_ people did.

"You're a _ghost_?" Yao asked.

The word felt wrong in his mouth; corny and ridiculous and yet utterly appropriate.

"You could say that. I'm not alive, so I suppose it fits," said Ivan.

Yao was silent for a moment. He'd never really believed in ghosts – hell, the only reason that he'd accepted Arthur's dare was because he was one hundred percent sure that the house _could not_ be haunted because there was no such thing – and yet here he was, having a conversation with one. He had so many questions to ask, but he was sure that Ivan would not know the answers to many of them, so he began with something that Ivan would know.

"Why are you telling me this? Why did you show me what you can do?" Yao asked.

"I messed up when I took your camera, and I didn't want to leave you confused. Besides, you're the first person I've talked to in… well, the last person I talked to said that it was 1975, and I don't know how many years it's been since then. It feels like a lot," Ivan explained.

"1975? Ivan, that's…" Yao paused for a moment, doing the math in his head, "that's nearly forty years ago!"

"It's been that long? Oh, wow. That's amazing," said Ivan.

"So you're saying you've been dead since 1975?" asked Yao.

Ivan shook his head.

"That was just the last time I talked to someone. He didn't believe that I was a ghost, though, and he left before I had a chance to show him what I could do. No, I don't remember dying so I don't know exactly when it happened, but I remember being alive in 1968," Ivan explained.

"1968? Jeez. How old are you?" asked Yao.

"Seventeen," said Ivan.

Yao took a moment to mentally calculate how old Ivan actually was. If he had been seventeen in 1968, he would have been born in 1951, which meant that he was now sixty-three – or he would have been if he hadn't died. Though Ivan was physically at least a year younger than Yao, who was almost nineteen, but he was really old enough to be his grandfather.

"How do you know that you're dead if you don't remember dying?" Yao asked.

"I just do. It makes sense, doesn't it? I can appear and disappear at will, I haven't aged or needed to eat or drink or do any other necessary things, and I don't have a heartbeat or a pulse. Heck, I don't even need to breathe, though I still do out of habit! Being a ghost, or whatever you want to call me, is the only explanation," said Ivan.

"Are there other ghosts? Sorry if all of these questions are annoying, I'm just very curious," said Yao.

"You're not annoying me at all! Really, I haven't talked to anyone in years, and I've never had a real conversation about what I am. And no, I haven't met any other ghosts, but I can't leave the house. When I try to step off the property, I just disappear and reappear in my old bedroom," said Ivan.

"Your bedroom? So this is–er, was your house?" asked Yao.

Ivan nodded.

"Yep! The room we're in right now was my big sister's room. We lived here for a couple of years when I was alive. My family moved here from Russia when I was fifteen, and I guess this is where I died," said Ivan.

"Is it hard being here by yourself? I mean, I start getting kinda weird if I'm home alone for the whole weekend, and you've spent over forty years in this house and only talked to two people," said Yao.

It suddenly hit him how sad that was. Although Ivan seemed cheerful, it couldn't be easy being dead and alone with no clue as to whether this was to be his lot forever.

"I haven't been… conscious… the whole time," said Ivan, "when there's nobody else here, I tend to… hibernate. That's probably the best way of saying it. If someone comes into the house, I wake up. I don't know if I can sense the presence of another person or if it's because people are noisy."

Yao breathed a sigh of relief. The idea of Ivan, or anyone for that matter, being subjected to four and a half decades of ghostly solitary confinement made him feel uneasy.

"So if I were to leave, you'd just go to sleep until the next time someone came to the house?" asked Yao.

Ivan's smile disappeared as he nodded.

"Are you saying you're going to leave?" he asked.

"Well, I have to go home, but… I could come back tomorrow if you'd like," said Yao.

"I'd like that a lot," said Ivan.

Yao smiled. Though he knew that it was because Ivan was starved for company, he couldn't help but feel happy that he wanted to see him again.

"Okay, I'm going to go now because it's late and I'm really cold and a bit tired, but I promise I'll be back tomorrow," said Yao.

"Goodbye, Yao. I look forward to seeing you again," said Ivan.

"Me too," said Yao.

He meant it – though it had been a very strange and confusing experience, he had enjoyed talking to the dead boy. It was hard to tell, but it seemed like Ivan felt the same way about him.

* * *

><p>"You didn't actually go there, did you?" Arthur asked, rousing Yao from his near-slumber.<p>

The two of them were sitting in the library at the university that they both attended, killing time between classes. Or rather, Arthur was killing time while Yao tried to catch up on some much-needed sleep before his next lecture.

"I did so," Yao said indignantly, not lifting his head from the book that he was using as a pillow, "I just didn't bring the camera with me."

"Sure, sure," said Arthur.

Yao was beginning to get more than a little annoyed with Arthur. Though he was the closest thing that Yao had to a friend, he often found himself losing his patience with Arthur, and this was one of those times.

"Before you rudely interrupted me, I was face down on the desk trying to make up for how little sleep I got last night. And you know why I barely slept? It's because I went to that god damn house and didn't get back until midnight," said Yao.

"Oh, wow, midnight. So late. You're such a rebel, Yao," Arthur said sarcastically.

Yao had actually stayed awake until much later, thinking about Ivan the whole time. He wasn't about to tell Arthur that – he didn't know whether Ivan wanted him to tell people, and besides, he wasn't going to give the Brit the satisfaction of being right about ghosts. They'd spent nearly an hour arguing about it last week when the topic of the supposedly haunted house first came up, and Yao had been adamant that the house was most definitely not haunted and that ghosts almost certainly didn't exist. Oh how wrong he had been.

"Whatever, I'll just come over to your place after my last class so you can show me the video," said Arthur.

Yao shook his head.

"I already have plans for this afternoon," he said.

"What?" asked Arthur.

"I'm seeing a friend," said Yao.

"Bollocks! You don't have friends!" said Arthur.

Yao laughed.

"That means that we're not friends, which means that _you_ don't have any friends," he said, "but I actually do have a friend, and I'm going to see him this afternoon."

"Are they a real friend or are you just paying them, like some sort of friend prostitute?" asked Arthur.

"No," Yao said with a scowl, "and that's not even a real thing."

"It could be. I mean, it's a big world, I'm sure lots of things that a lot of crazy things exist somewhere out there," said Arthur.

"Whatever," Yao said, closing his eyes and hoping that Arthur would take the hint that he didn't want to talk. He wished he could have stayed home and had a nice sleep in today, but he had a class at nine and another at eleven and couldn't afford to miss either of them. He didn't have any afternoon classes and had planned on visiting Ivan as soon as the eleven o'clock one ended, but the idea of going home and having a little nap before visiting him was starting to sound appealing.

"So," Arthur said, interrupting Yao's daydream, "tell me about your friend. Do I know them?"

"No," Yao mumbled, "you don't."

"What's their name?" asked Arthur.

"Ivan," said Yao.

"Ivan, huh? So you're not being secretive because you've got a girlfriend," said Arthur.

"Nope," said Yao.

"What about a boyfriend?" asked Arthur.

"Also nope. Now, if you don't mind, I'm trying to rest, so–"

Before Yao could finish, his phone, which was sitting on the table right beside his book-turned-pillow, began to buzz.

"Call from your friend?" Arthur asked.

Yao picked the phone up and looked at the screen for a moment before shaking his head.

"Nope, that was my alarm. My next class starts in ten minutes, and it's on the other side of the campus, so I'd better get going."

* * *

><p>Though the sun had not yet dipped below the horizon, it was partially obscured by a row of trees in the backyard, and from his bedroom window Yao could see only a few rays of light filtering through the foliage. He turned his head slightly, but from where he lay on the bed he couldn't quite see the face of the clock on his bedside table. Not that it mattered; the sun was setting, which meant it was probably mid-evening, and–<p>

"Shit!" Yao muttered, hurriedly clambering off of the bed.

He had gotten home not long after twelve, and had planned on taking a quick nap before going to visit Ivan. However, "quick" had somehow turned into "six hours", even though Yao was certain that he had set an alarm on his phone for one o'clock. It was almost too late for him to go and visit Ivan, and it was definitely too late for him to spend any significant amount of time at the abandoned house and get in-depth answers to the questions that had been on his mind all day. Even so, he didn't want to leave Ivan waiting with no explanation. Yao had no idea how long it took for Ivan to go into the "hibernation" that he had described, so it was possible that Ivan was doing it right now and wouldn't notice if Yao didn't show up until tomorrow, but he didn't want to chance it.

Moving as fast as he possibly could to make up for lost time, Yao quickly changed clothes and grabbed his bag and keys before running down the stairs, not bothering to give his mother any explanation beyond _going out, be back soon_ as he rushed past her and out the front door.

Yao kept within the speed limit as he drove through town, but as soon as the residential areas gave way to fields and trees he sped up and didn't slow down until he reached the abandoned house where he had met Ivan the night before.

"Sorry I'm late!" Yao called out as he threw the front door open.

The house was silent for a moment, and then Ivan appeared in the front hallway. Yao jumped a little and let out a surprised yelp as the other boy materialised out of thin air in front of him – he had only seen Ivan disappear and reappear at will once before, and was far from used to it.

"Sorry if I scared you," Ivan said sheepishly, "and we never agreed on a time, so you're not late."

"You're right, but the thing is… I can't stay long, at least not without missing dinner at home. I came to tell you that so you wouldn't be left wondering where I was. I also wanted to give you something," said Yao.

"Give me something?" asked Ivan.

Yao nodded, unzipping his bag and pulling out a thick book whose dusty black cover was emblazoned with thick gold letters that read _Modern History_.

"I thought you might want to learn more about everything that's happened since 1968," he said.

Ivan grinned as Yao handed him the book.

"Thanks, Yao. I… I've never gotten a present from someone who wasn't family before," he said.

"Oh? Well, I hope you enjoy it. And, ah, I got it from the university library, and it's due back in three weeks, so it's not a forever gift," said Yao.

"That's okay. I don't have anything else to do, so I'll probably have it finished by tomorrow," said Ivan.

"If I have time, I'll come and see you tomorrow and we can talk about it. But right now, I really have to go, sorry," said Yao.

"Alright," said Ivan, "see you then."

He vanished from sight before Yao could say goodbye.


End file.
